The Road Between Us

by Nigel Farndale

  I

  London. Summer. Present day. Two and a half months after Edward’s release

  EDWARD IS CLIMBING UP THE WALL OF THE CAVE, FINDING footholds, breaking his nails on the rocks as he clings and inches higher and higher. He is near the entrance now. He can almost taste the daylight …

  He opens his eyes and tries to establish where he is. The inner man has woken with a jolt. He stretches, testing the walls, nudging himself to consciousness. There is something touching his head, but what? The enveloping darkness makes it difficult to determine. He brushes it with the back of his hand. Apart from a slightly raised pattern, it has a flat surface. Wallpaper. It is the ceiling.

  His eyes have adjusted to the gloom now and, when he looks down, he can see he is standing on a bedroom chest, the drawers of which have been pulled out to make a tier of steps. He has been sleep-climbing again. It is the third or fourth night he has awoken to find himself here.

  He touches his brow and finds it mantled with sweat. The T-shirt he has slept in is damp, too. As lightly as he can, he lowers himself down. The digital clock on the bedside table reads 3.23. He turns on the light and, though it is only a forty-watt bulb, has to shield his eyes. He looks around. There are tones of grey in the bedroom, but they do not run to the spectrum of colour. He is still inhabiting the shadow world between black and white.

  Now he feels a floating sensation in his groin and belly, as if he is in a lift that has come to an abrupt stop. The room seems to be spinning slowly. Sitting on the bed, he tries to focus on a stationary object, a bowl on the dressing table. Why has he never noticed it before? A hand snakes out towards it. The bowl contains hairpins, a disposable contact lens in a blister pack, euro coins, earrings, an AA battery, mascara, tweezers, an Oyster card, a ski pass, a packet of Rennies, three rings.

  The traces of Frejya.

  He examines them with jittery fingers, as if each contains a part of her. And then his heart dilates. Curled up at the bottom of the bowl he sees a photograph: a scarf, a towel, some socks and a bra on top of the duvet, fashioned into the letters ‘LYA’. It is the ‘Love You Always’ sign he made for her on the day he left for Afghanistan. She must have photographed it. LYA. The last words she had said to him as he wound down the taxi window to wave goodbye. The shorthand that spoke the immeasurable words of their love.

  His fingers loosen. The photo drops to the floor. He reaches out to steady himself and his hand falls on a brush. There are long, balled-up hairs caught on its teeth. Pale blonde. It must have been Frejya’s brush. These must be Frejya’s hairs. He tugs them out, holds them to his nose and, for the first time in years, thinks he can smell something. It is sweet and musty, the smell of flour. As he detects it, a faint blur of colour swims before his eyes like a shoal of tropical fish, and then is gone. He picks up a bottle of scent. Frejya’s scent. Again the brief suffusion before he returns to his world of black and white.

  He closes his eyes and pictures her slow blink. Hears her loose laughter as he tips her on the bed and kisses her bare feet before tugging off her jeans. Feels the warmth of her soft belly against his.

  Her absence is like a presence now, as tangible as an indentation, as if she has just risen from the bed and the sheets are still warm from where she had been lying. He walks over to the fitted cupboard and, opening the door, contemplates the dresses queuing up on the rack. As he runs his hands along them, setting them in motion, he remembers Frejya trying them on, smoothing them out over her hips.

  He pulls out a cocktail dress of oriental brocade. It looks grey, though he remembers it as red and gold. As he holds it to his nose there is a shimmer of colours, a brief sensation of softness in his hands and a prickly awareness of someone else in the room. He looks up.

  Frejya is standing in the bedroom doorway in her dressing gown, watching him.

  ‘They told me you were dead,’ Edward says.

  Hannah covers her mouth with her hand. Shakes her head slowly.

  Edward holds up the dress and smiles. ‘Your clothes still smell of you.’

  II

  AS HE APPROACHES THE HOUSE, NIALL ACKNOWLEDGES WITH A HALF-salute the lone photographer waiting under an umbrella across the street. When he reaches the doorstep, he pumps his own up and down a couple of times and pats his pockets for the housekeys. The lock turns with a familiar clack-clack and he stamps his shoes on the mat before bending down to scoop up the post scattered across it. He shivers as the prickles brush against the backs of his fingers. More familiarity.

  ‘Hello,’ he says at the foot of the stairs as he drops the free newspapers, fliers and magazines in a bin. The bills and letters addressed to Frejya he puts on the radiator cover. ‘Anyone home?’

  The house smells of two-week-old flowers. It is gloomy, but no one has turned on the lights. He listens. Hearing Hannah playing an acoustic guitar upstairs, plucking the strings with her fingertips in the Spanish style, he remembers how alive it made him feel when he used to call round here and check on her after her mother died. She had turned the house into student digs, renting out bedrooms to two nineteen-year-olds on her foundation course. They seemed to spend all their time texting, experimenting with eyelash extensions and listening to hip-hop. There would be unwashed plates around the sink, labels on food in the fridge, the stale smell of marijuana in the air.

  Niall hesitates before entering the sitting room. Edward will be in there, staring out of the window as usual. It will smell like an infirmary: overheated and chemical. But he hopes his old friend will be more communicative this time, hopes that the thin layer of ice in which he is encased will have thawed a little.

  He skitters his fingernails against the door panel before entering. ‘Hello? Northy?’

  Edward looks up, sees who it is and looks down again. He is wearing a tracksuit with a hood. His feet are bare. He hasn’t shaved.

  ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

  Edward forces a smile. ‘Just had one.’

  ‘There was a snapper outside,’ Niall says. ‘I’m assuming he’s a freelance because, as far as I know, all the editors on the nationals have agreed to call their boys off in return for …’

  ‘Don’t think the neighbours were too happy about them being camped out there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At least they’ve stopped shouting through the letterbox.’

  Good, Niall thinks. He seems quite talkative today. ‘That must have been horrible. I’ve told the editors that all requests for interviews have to come through me from now on. Not sure how much good it will do though, to be honest. Your best bet might be to give one interview, and then the others will lose interest. Go for one of the broadsheets. I know the editor of the Guardian pretty well. You might need to pose for some snaps too.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Niall looks at the ceiling as he hears Hannah turn up the volume on the music she has started listening to. Coldplay, if he is not mistaken. ‘I gather it’s not going that well with your therapist,’ he says. ‘Han says you won’t talk to him.’

  ‘Waste of time.’

  ‘But you’re looking much better. You’ve gained weight.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  Niall hears these thin words as a reproach. On his last few visits he has felt increasingly self-conscious about his own weight. Edward’s attenuated frame seems to be a criticism of him, a confirmation of his moral inferiority.

  He looks for a distraction, sensing that his old friend is going to prove hard work today after all. Still chilly and absent. As he looks around the room he realizes, with a stab of guilt, that he probably knows its layout better than its owner does. Though most of the objects are relics from Edward’s years in the diplomatic service, their locations have changed. Niall had helped Frejya rearrange them after they decorated this room together and he put up the new shelf. He tests this now with his thumb to check its rawlplugs are holding. It is fine, easily standing the weight of the African mask and fly switch, the statue of Buddha
, the paperknife in the style of a Florentine dagger, the Russian doll and the pair of Spanish candlesticks shaped like entwined serpents.

  The lacquered Chinese screen that Edward would have remembered as being against the window is now in the corner, concealing the television. The Turkish scimitar that used to lie on top of the bookcase is now displayed on the wall. Only the old French rifle is in its original place, mounted above the fireplace, its spiked bayonet still pointing at the rocking chair in the corner. Edward’s father had brought it home from the war as a souvenir.

  Niall picks up a framed photograph of himself with Edward. They are wearing the same college scarf as they punt together on the Cam. He checks his watch. Almost six. ‘Oh, sod tea; let’s open a bottle of wine. Fancy a glass?’

  Edward shrugs.

  Niall puts a hand to his stomach as if trying to flatten it as he goes through the doorway. In the kitchen he selects a bottle of red from the rack, and blows dust from its label before pulling its cork, pouring two glasses and swirling one of them around. He sips. Its thickness takes him by surprise, like meat on his tongue.

  When he returns to the room he hands a glass to Edward then he points at the old Staunton chessboard with his index finger and cocks his thumb like a pistol. ‘Fancy a game?’

  ‘Only if you’ve improved.’

  Niall laughs, grateful for the change of mood. ‘You know me, I am to chess what Wayne Rooney is … to chess.’ This is better, he thinks. In the past few weeks, the chessboard has proved a useful no man’s land between them. A game that does not require conversation. He sets up the pieces before taking a black pawn in one hand and a white in the other and holding them behind his back. Edward taps his right arm and, seeing he has picked white, makes the first move, developing a knight. Niall moves his queen pawn two spaces. Edward mirrors it.

  ‘Got some good news,’ Niall says without taking his eyes off the board. ‘I don’t know whether your solicitor has been through the details yet but when you …’ he curves the air with his fingers, ‘ “died” your half of the mortgage was written off and Frejya’s half …’ Pause. He has realized what he is about to say. ‘The building society have now said that they are satisfied that Frejya’s death wasn’t, you know, that she didn’t … Anyway, you don’t have a mortgage now.’

  A black cat pokes its head around the door, like a nervous publicist checking on a client.

  ‘Didn’t know you’d got a cat,’ Niall says.

  ‘Not ours. Belongs to a neighbour. Hannah has been feeding it scraps … Whose decision was it to declare me dead?’

  Niall crosses his arms. Pretends to be weighing up his next chess move. ‘It was a departmental decision, really. Standard procedure.’

  ‘How did Frejya take it when you told her?’

  ‘She was upset, obviously.’

  ‘She had her accident soon afterwards, didn’t she?’

  Niall moves his head in agreement. ‘Anyway, in addition to the death-in-service payment we made to Frejya, which I will make sure doesn’t have to be paid back, I gather that you both had private life insurance. Frejya got half a million when you “died” and Hannah got a further half-million when Frejya died. So financially … I don’t know what becomes of that, but I’ll make sure we cover you for it if the insurance company want your half back.’

  ‘Thanks. Again.’ Edward moves a bishop from one side of the board to the other but ends up on the wrong diagonal. A frown. ‘Have I moved that properly?’ he asks.

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t rush things.’

  ‘In the cave I used to try and replay games in my head,’ Edward says, placing the piece on the correct square.

  Niall leans forward.

  ‘There was one I’d memorized when I was at school, Bobby Fischer versus Donald Byrne, the one where Fischer made a queen sacrifice on move 17, getting a rook, two bishops and a pawn in return. He then went on to force a checkmate while Byrne’s queen sat helpless at the other end of the board. I kept trying to picture the notation but I couldn’t do it. It’s hard to …’ He trails off.

  ‘Concentrate when you’re light-headed from lack of food?’ Niall nods encouragingly. Keep it light, he thinks. Keep him talking. A conversation between friends rather than a debrief. ‘What did you miss most?’

  Edward closes his eyes, his usual signal to change the subject.

  ‘Do you want to see your obituary?’ Niall pats his pockets and then shakes his head, making the flesh under his chin double up and crease. ‘I must have left it in my case. They rang me for a quote when they were writing it. I told them you were lazy and feckless.’ He grins to show he is joking.

  ‘My guards showed it to me in the cave. It was in the edition of the Telegraph they filmed me holding up.’

  ‘Yes, of course it was. I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘Is that why you had me declared dead? To make them show some proof of life?’

  Niall looks away. ‘There were a number of options we were considering.’

  Colour is rising to Edward’s face. ‘Did anyone think to tell Frejya that was why you were doing it?’ He says this loudly, almost shouting.

  Niall puffs out his cheeks. ‘We thought it would be kinder not to. We thought declaring you dead would give her some closure.’

  ‘It gave her closure all right.’ There is heat in Edward’s words now.

  Niall castles, moving his king first with an emphatic click of wood against wood. The silence flows back into the space between them heavily, like oil.

  But Edward hasn’t finished yet. ‘Why did they let me go?’

  ‘We don’t know … Did they talk to you at all?’

  Without taking his eyes off Niall, Edward bites his lip and moves his head from left to right, right to left.

  ‘There were no other hostages?’

  ‘None. Why did they release me?’

  Niall shrugs clownishly. ‘Perhaps they found you too annoying.’

  No smile from Edward. There is an urgency to his next question. ‘Was my liberty bought? Did I endanger other people? I need … I can’t seem to …’

  ‘Sorry, Northy. I’m not very good at this. What advice did your therapist give?’

  ‘I told you, he’s a waste of space … He kept asking me how I felt about the people who held me hostage.’

  ‘And how do you feel?’

  ‘Don’t feel anything.’

  Niall purses his lips as he nods. ‘Well, I hate them. Fucking animals.’ Realizing he is breathing rapidly, he holds up his hands and laughs. ‘Sorry. It’s just I felt terrible about persuading you to go. I had to live with that for years.’

  ‘Poor you.’ Edward runs his hands through his hair. ‘Sorry. That sounded … It must have been hard for you, too, Niall. I’m grateful that you put your own life on hold to look after Frejya and Hannah.’

  ‘You were telling me about your captors. How many were there?’

  ‘Actually, would you mind if we talk about this another time?’ Edward is studying his friend’s fleshy face and looking puzzled.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Niall says with a smile he hopes will lighten the mood once more. ‘You’re thinking the features are more or less the same, but he’s aged into his own father. Right?’ He becomes aware of the ache in his jaw as he holds his smile.

  ‘What was Frejya like when I disappeared?’

  Niall understands now that Edward is not going to let things go today. ‘Amazing. She was amazing. She lobbied constantly to keep your story in the news, keep the pressure up on the FCO to find you. She organized petitions and did things like sponsored bike rides to raise campaign funds. And she would do these vigils outside the gates of Number Ten, holding a photograph of you. There’s some video footage of her giving a press conference if you’d like to see it.’

  ‘Not right now.’

  The cat enters again, pads around the room and leaves. Niall nods at four cardboard boxes stacked against the wall. ‘You had a chance to look through them?’
He stands up, opens one and takes out a mug and removes its bubble wrap. Written on its side are the words ‘Friends of Edward Northcote’. He hands it to Edward and opens a second box. From this he takes out a T-shirt wrapped in cellophane, some pens and balloons and a mouse mat. He holds them up in turn to show they all have the same words printed on them. ‘And have you read any of these?’ He unties the neck of a bulging bin liner, reaches inside and pulls out a handful of letters. ‘There are three or four more of these around here somewhere. Letters of support from the public. Cards from well-wishers.’

  Edward holds the mug up to the light from the window. ‘When I was declared dead …’ he says. ‘How did Frejya react?’

  ‘She sort of lost the will to, um …’

  ‘Do you think she killed herself?’

  ‘No. Definitely not.’

  ‘Was there a ransom paid for me?’

  ‘I don’t mean to be evasive, Northy, but we’re having an internal inquiry about what happened and once …’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why there was no intelligence about who was holding me. Why was … We were occupying their country, for God’s sake.’

  ‘We didn’t know you were alive.’

  ‘But you didn’t try and find out whether I was or I wasn’t? What about that French academic who was taken at the same time as me? His government got him released quickly enough.’

  ‘The French always pay ransoms, that’s why their citizens are always the preferred targets for kidnappings … Has Hannah shown you the cuttings file about the campaign? Let me see if I can find it.’ Niall opens a drawer, searches around it for a moment then tries the one next to it. From this he takes out a ring binder. ‘Here.’ He opens it and taps with his finger at a newspaper cutting. It shows Frejya holding a lit candle in one hand and a photograph of Edward in the other. There is tape over her mouth. As Edward studies it, Niall hears in his memory the loud crackle as she pulls out a strip of duct tape and cuts it with scissors before sealing her lips.

  Edward turns the page and sees a photograph of himself, the one taken in the cave with him holding up a copy of the Daily Telegraph. ‘So the ransom demand came after this was taken?’